Christmas shopping? Try Oxfam Unwrapped

December 17, 2011

Oxfam Unwrapped is a fantastic way of being good to yourself and others this Christmas. Unwrapped is the largest range of charity gifts on the market, and this year marks its eighth anniversary. Safe water is just one example of the amazing life-changing gifts on offer at Oxfam Unwrapped. Other gifts range from goats and farmyards to teachers and health workers and make a huge difference to supporting Oxfam’s programme work in communities living in poverty around the world. For more details, visit www.oxfamunwrapped.com.

The case study below, is one of our bestsellers and a reasonable price (£9).

Even before the 2010 earthquake, Haiti was a difficult place to live because of natural disasters through to political upheaval.

During one political emergency, residents of Conasa, a poor area of Cap Haitian had their municipal water supply cut off. It hit people hard. They had to walk further and pay much more for often contaminated, unsafe water.

Oxfam worked with community committees to identify the neighbourhoods where the needs were greatest. These households received a card entitling them to three buckets of water – 15 gallons – per day.

Servidieu Merilus says: "We use the water for cooking, washing and drinking. There are seven of us at home. Now we can afford to buy other things like oil, that we couldn’t buy before. Water is our first priority. We buy water and then with what’s left over we buy food. Having this water means we have more money left over to buy food. The family feels the difference that saving those 4 gourdes means. Now we can have breakfast, lunch and maybe even supper. This is part of the benefit of this water we are getting now. Until four weeks ago, before we started getting this water we would only eat once a day."